Several times in my life, I have been in the position of knowing people on the opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, and I keep seeing similar patterns on both sides. First of all, both sides picture themselves as powerless in the face of an oncoming avalanche. You can't stand two people back to back and have both of them twelve feet taller than the other. Obviously one side or the other, and usually both, have serious delusions about how powerful and malevolent their opponents are. Generally both sides are grossly misinformed about what the other side believes, and when I have tried to communicate between sides, I find an identical response. I get arguments so specious that it's obvious the clear intent is to frustrate understanding. It's not that one side cannot understand the other - they will not understand.

So, in the spirit of Rhett Butler, who joined the Confederate Army after the fall of Atlanta, saying he could only get attached to a cause after it was good and lost, this page and its companion are an attempt to tell intellectuals and religious believers what each side thinks of the other.

If you're an intellectual who is embarrassed by the specious reasoning that is rampant in academia, or a conservative Christian who is appalled by the awful reasoning spouted from many pulpits, I am not writing about you. So you're wasting our time by writing and saying that you don't commit any of these sins. But if you blissfully assume that your side is good and the other side is evil, and you're shocked and offended by what I say about you, good.

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The Bottom Line

-Blatant Stereotyping

-Ignorance of Even Basic Facts

-Intellectual Dishonesty and Specious Reasoning

If you read this page and its companion, you will note they follow almost identical structures. This is because intellectual dishonesty is pretty much the same regardless of who commits it. On both sides of the divide between religious believers and intellectuals, we find intelligent people who, instead of using their intelligence to seek the truth, and allow the evidence to lead where it will, have already decided what the truth is and use their intelligence to rationalize preconceived ideologies.

See, this isn't the whole question. He left out a few very important factors: God's supposed omnipotence and omniscience, and the fact that God is not claimed to be just good and loving and moral, but that he is supposed to be the absolute standard of these traits.

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Volumes have been written on this subject but almost nobody who tosses off this question asks it seriously, because nobody who asks this question has done all that he or she personally can do to prevent evil.

Why does this matter? It certainly doesn't apply to God, because:
1) Humans are not capable of doing everything, and must devote effort to other activities. No one said humans were omnipotent. God, on the other hand, has no such limits. A human might not volunteer at a soup kitchen or house-building organizations due to time constraints or physical disability. An omnipotent deity has no excuses.
2) Humans are fallible and capable of being lazy and selfish at the expense of others: in other words, we can be immoral. A God who was the absolute standard of morality, however, would by definiton not be immoral, and so he would be above such things as laziness and selfishness.

So, basically, this analogy is taking limited beings (us) and a supposedly unlimited being (God) and then making a comparison based on the limits of human ability and morality. Uh, yeah, way to go, duder.

Tsk. There's a reason why people keep bringing this argument up. The reasoning is so simple a child could get it.

1) If you're calling God "good" or "loving", then God must live up to your standards of "good" and "loving".
2) Nearly all definitions of good, particularly ones of religions that worship the sort of God the problem of evil is aimed at, include opposition to and prevention of evil acts, and protecting others from unnecessary harm. Nearly all definitions of loving include protecting your loved ones from harm. Indeed, most moral codes include the failure to prevent harm that you are capable of stopping to be immoral.
3) God is described as the epitome and absolute perfect standard of morality and love; he is perfectly moral, perfectly loving. It is against his very definition to falter in his love or morality, and thus he would not fail to uphold the duties of love and morality.
4) God, therefore, has every desire to eradicate evil: as a moral being, he would want to prevent evil acts, and as a loving being, he would want to prevent harm to his loved ones (i.e., everybody.)
5) God, as an omnipotent and omniscient being, has the means to carry out his desires; the knowledge to know what to do and when to do it, and the ability to do absolutely anything necessary to prevent evil.
6) Therefore, God, by definition as an omnipotent, omniscient, all-moral, all-loving deity, would prevent evil perfectly.
7) Therefore there is no evil, because God has both the ability and the desire to eradicate all evil.

8) Waitaminute...

9) There is evil. Even the religions that propose this sort of God admit it; it is why they preach and have afterlives based on morality.
10) Something doesn't add up.
11) Maybe religionists should have thought about the ramifications of a perfect deity before they wrote up those traits into their mythos.

They are a lot more believable, generally featuring a cast of characters that looks...well, suspiciously like...the exact same cast of characters you'd find in normal human interaction in a big enough city. But although some may be more POWERFUL than others, some may be WISER than others, all reserve the right to step in and screw with YOUR life just for their entertainment, and whether or not you really made them happy/really pissed them off this week:

They are a lot more believable, generally featuring a cast of characters that looks...well, suspiciously like...the exact same cast of characters you'd find in normal human interaction in a big enough city. But although some may be more POWERFUL than others, some may be WISER than others, all reserve the right to step in and screw with YOUR life just for their entertainment, and whether or not you really made them happy/really pissed them off this week:

None claim to be perfect or all forgiving.

They also tend to allow mear mortals to to refer to Them with less than polite terms when They are getting to be rather annoying. I know I have referred to my Goddess as a b!tch often enough when she gets annoying.

I have to wonder where free will fits into this whole omni/omni/omni scheme of things...

I mean, if God knows beyond a shadow of a doubt what you're going to do, then when you do it, are you excersising free will? I have a hard time accepting this as true.

Of course, any arguments against omni/omni/omni using logic are always refuted by the religious as "Well, you're putting yourself at the level of God, and you can't do that. Just because you don't know His plan does not mean that He doesn't know exactly what He's doing."

There's no argument for this sort of "logic". It just doesn't work. I have stopped discussing religion with religious people, in favor of far more productive pursuits, like smashing my forehead repeatedly into a brick wall.

Think of God as an observer- just because He sees that you're going to do something doesn't mean you didn't choose to do it.

If God knows exactly what you will do in the future, you can't very well do anything else other than what he sees you doing, can you? That would mean God got it wrong, and we can't have that, now can we. If God knows the future, that means the future must necessarily go exactly as God sees it: that it's all preordained from the moment of creation. God would know -- and, indeed, have been responsible for -- every behavioral pattern, every firing synapse, every environmental influence, every instinct, every detail of every consciousness, every aspect of every soul (if such things exist). Free will would be an illusion; the dominoes were set up from the start to think they set up themselves.

Oh, and God doesn't really seem all that big on free will in the first place:

Exodus 4:20-23, NIV wrote:

21 The LORD said to Moses, "When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have given you the power to do. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. 22 Then say to Pharaoh, 'This is what the LORD says: Israel is my firstborn son, 23 and I told you, "Let my son go, so he may worship me." But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son.' "

Exodus 7:1-5, NIV wrote:

1 Then the LORD said to Moses, "See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet. 2 You are to say everything I command you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of his country. 3 But I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and though I multiply my miraculous signs and wonders in Egypt, 4 he will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, my people the Israelites. 5 And the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it."

Exodus 9:8-12, NIV wrote:

8 Then the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, "Take handfuls of soot from a furnace and have Moses toss it into the air in the presence of Pharaoh. 9 It will become fine dust over the whole land of Egypt, and festering boils will break out on men and animals throughout the land." 10 So they took soot from a furnace and stood before Pharaoh. Moses tossed it into the air, and festering boils broke out on men and animals. 11 The magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils that were on them and on all the Egyptians. 12 But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the LORD had said to Moses.

Exodus 10:1-2, NIV wrote:

1 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials that I may perform these miraculous signs of mine among them 2 that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them, and that you may know that I am the LORD."

Exodus 10:18-20, NIV wrote:

18 Moses then left Pharaoh and prayed to the LORD . 19 And the LORD changed the wind to a very strong west wind, which caught up the locusts and carried them into the Red Sea. Not a locust was left anywhere in Egypt. 20 But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let the Israelites go.

Exodus 10:27-28, NIV wrote:

27 But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he was not willing to let them go. 28 Pharaoh said to Moses, "Get out of my sight! Make sure you do not appear before me again! The day you see my face you will die."

Exodus 11:9-10, NIV wrote:

9 The LORD had said to Moses, "Pharaoh will refuse to listen to you-so that my wonders may be multiplied in Egypt." 10 Moses and Aaron performed all these wonders before Pharaoh, but the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let the Israelites go out of his country.

Exodus 14:5-8, NIV wrote:

5 When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, Pharaoh and his officials changed their minds about them and said, "What have we done? We have let the Israelites go and have lost their services!" 6 So he had his chariot made ready and took his army with him. 7 He took six hundred of the best chariots, along with all the other chariots of Egypt, with officers over all of them. 8 The LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, so that he pursued the Israelites, who were marching out boldly.

Exodus 14:15-18, NIV wrote:

15 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on. 16 Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water so that the Israelites can go through the sea on dry ground. 17 I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them. And I will gain glory through Pharaoh and all his army, through his chariots and his horsemen. 18 The Egyptians will know that I am the LORD when I gain glory through Pharaoh, his chariots and his horsemen."

Deuteronomy 2:30, NIV wrote:

30 But Sihon king of Heshbon refused to let us pass through. For the LORD your God had made his spirit stubborn and his heart obstinate in order to give him into your hands, as he has now done.

Joshua 11:18-20, NIV wrote:

18 Joshua waged war against all these kings for a long time. 19 Except for the Hivites living in Gibeon, not one city made a treaty of peace with the Israelites, who took them all in battle. 20 For it was the LORD himself who hardened their hearts to wage war against Israel, so that he might destroy them totally, exterminating them without mercy, as the LORD had commanded Moses.

Isaiah 63:17, NIV wrote:

17 Why, O LORD, do you make us wander from your ways and harden our hearts so we do not revere you? Return for the sake of your servants, the tribes that are your inheritance.

Daniel 3:8-10, NIV wrote:

8 But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way. 9 Now God had caused the official to show favor and sympathy to Daniel, 10 but the official told Daniel, "I am afraid of my lord the king, who has assigned your food and drink. Why should he see you looking worse than the other young men your age? The king would then have my head because of you."

Matthew 13:10-15, NIV wrote:

10 The disciples came to him and asked, "Why do you speak to the people in parables?" 11 He replied, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. 12 Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. 13 This is why I speak to them in parables: "Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. 14 In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: "'You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. 15 For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.'"

John 12:37-40, NIV wrote:

37 Even after Jesus had done all these miraculous signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him. 38 This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet: "Lord, who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" 39 For this reason they could not believe, because, as Isaiah says elsewhere: 40 "He has blinded their eyes and deadened their hearts, so they can neither see with their eyes, nor understand with their hearts, nor turn — and I would heal them."

Romans 8:29-30, NIV wrote:

29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

Romans 9:14-23, NIV wrote:

14 What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! 15 For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." 16 It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy. 17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: "I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." 18 Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. 19 One of you will say to me: "Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?" 20 But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?'" 21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? 22 What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath — prepared for destruction? 23 What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory[?]

Ephesians 1:1-12, NIV wrote:

1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus: 2 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will — 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace 8 that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. 9And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment — to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. 11 In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, 12 in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.

Ephesians 2:8-10, NIV wrote:

8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

2 Thessalonians 2:8-12, NIV wrote:

8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming. 9 The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders, 10 and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie 12 and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.

2 Timothy 1:8-9, NIV wrote:

8 So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me his prisoner. But join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God, 9 who has saved us and called us to a holy life — not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time.

He seems pretty big on hardening people's hearts and picking favorites for salvation and predestination... hardly what you'd expect if the big guy was really as respectful of free will as people say he is.

What, you've never tried to persuade anyone? We're talking about the ability to make a choice. God never takes away our choice. There are always choices. And there are always things that influence our choices. But-

Doesn't the very nature of time dictate that, as long as nothing changes, what we do, we will have done, no matter how many times you rewind and replay the event? If we've done something, it's been done. So, say you had some ice-cream last summer. Does the fact that you know you had ice-cream now mean that you can no choice in the matter then? That because you know it happened and it could happen no other way, there was no free will? I mean, if we see time as a dimension, that means that somewhere back in time, you're deciding to eat that ice cream as we speak. It's happening. It's just happening in the then. So- you know you're eating ice-cream in the past. Was it destined and pre-determined with no free will?

God's not persuading anyone. He created the universe*. Everything that happens must necessarily be the result of his will.

* Well, you know. For the sake of argument, let's assume he did.

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We're talking about the ability to make a choice. God never takes away our choice.

Only because he technically never gives us one in the first place. If, at the creation of the universe, God knew you were going to decide to reply to my post today, how could you have done any differently? If you actually had a choice, you could just have easily not replied. But making this choice would imply that God's knowledge of the future was wrong, a thorny theological position, to be sure. It's not a real choice; it's merely the illusion of one, because you don't know every little detail of the universe that goes into the determination of your behavior. God does.

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And there are always things that influence our choices. But-

You seem to be forgetting that God knows every little detail of every little influence and set them all into motion at the moment of creation. Come on, man, it's your religion that says God knows everything and can do everything. You need to fully explore the ramifications of the traits of your own religion's deity. Every influence on your choices, no matter how small or large, was necessarily set up exactly that way by God. The sudden flash of inspiration that made you reply to my post was preordained from the beginning as God's will; he set up every little part in the complicated Rube Goldberg device that started at the beginning of the universe and that resulted in your hitting "Submit".

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Doesn't the very nature of time dictate that, as long as nothing changes, what we do, we will have done, no matter how many times you rewind and replay the event? [...] Was it destined and pre-determined with no free will?

You do realize that free will, if such a thing exists, only can affect things in the future, right? Your argument has nothing to do with anything. The issue here is not about the past, but the future. It's like all those stories with time travel and oracles and prophecies. If Oedipus hadn't chosen to kill his father and marry his mother, that would have made the Oracle wrong. Or, if you like a more pertinent example, if Peter hadn't denied Jesus three times before the rooster crowed, it would have made Jesus' prophecy wrong. Peter only has the illusion of choice in the matter: Jesus, with his divinely perfect knowledge of the future, sees exactly what Peter will do before Peter even does it. Peter was predestined to deny Jesus. He may have thought it was his own choice, but it was all set up that way from the start.

"Some would ask, how could a perfect God create a universe filled with so much that is evil. They have missed a greater conundrum: why would a perfect God create a universe at all?"
--Sister Miriam Godwinson
But For the Grace of Godfrom Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Wait, what? You're trying to argue that the past is somehow different from the future? How? I mean, the future you had when you started reading this just slipped by and became the past. What's changed besides your perspective?

Wait, what? You're trying to argue that the past is somehow different from the future? How? I mean, the future you had when you started reading this just slipped by and became the past. What's changed besides your perspective?

Time doesn't work like that, Josh. There's this thing called "arrow of time"...That is, past and future aren't symetric. That's why a broken glass doesn't assemble itself back - entropy progresses only in one direction.
There's the famous logic riddle of the teacher who tells his class "I'm giving you a surprise exam sometime next week". One of the students replies "You can't. If you don't give it by Thursday, we'll know it's on Friday, and it won't be a surprise - so it can't be on Friday. If you don't do it by Wednesday, we'll know it's on Thrusday, since it can't be on Friday, and so on."
Next Tuesday, they get a surprise exam. Flaw in the student's reasoning? Assuming future knowledge.
The past and the future are quite different.

Wait, what? You're trying to argue that the past is somehow different from the future? How?

Which one do you remember, dude? Are you seriously suggesting that free will can act on the past as well as the future? That is what would be necessary for your argument to work: the assumption that events in the past aren't written and can be altered by free will in the present.

Also, is there anywhere in the Bible where it asserts that God respects free will and lets things happen so that people can exercise their will freely, and how are these verses reconciled with the verses I quoted that show that God doesn't always respect the exercise of free will?